Australian investors sent eServGlobal (ESG) shares down 3 per cent on the back of the mobile payment provider's figures for the year to 31 October. But we think they've got it wrong. Strip out the £17.5m windfall from the sale of part of its stake in HomeSend and adjusted cash profits still rose 27 per cent to £1.4m.
The strongest gains for eServGlobal, which enables people in emerging markets to send and receive money using their mobile phones, were at HomeSend, the international remittance hub it owns jointly with MasterCard and BICS. HomeSend now has 486 'live corridors' between countries - up from 51 a year ago - meaning that residents of nearly 100 different nations can send money using its system.
Meanwhile, strong demand for eServGlobal's own platform, which facilitates domestic transactions, swelled its order backlog by 43 per cent to £2.7m. The group invested £3m in a new 'hardware-agnostic' platform, and has supplemented partnerships with mobile operators such as Vodafone (VOD) with ties to more financial institutions.
Prior to these results, broker Charles Stanley forecast pre-tax profits of £3m for the current financial year, giving EPS of 0.95p.
